Lyric opera stage band manager Charles Stine dead at 74

It was more than just a love of music that inspired Charles Stine to take up the trumpet, which led to a career that took him across the globe for more than 50 years.

During a football game at the old St. Mel High School, he was mesmerized not only with the instrument's sound, but by the reaction it got from the teenage crowd.

"He saw the trumpeter sort of leading the charge, the cheers and he thought that was great," his wife and longtime musical partner Sharon Jacobson Stine said.

He would later get his chance to shine as a member of several area musical ensembles whose styles ranged from classical to Latin jazz. He spent nearly 40 years as the stage band manager for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

He also played for ballet orchestras across the country, while also working as a music and orchestral teacher for the Chicago Public Schools.

Mr. Stine, 74, died on Friday, June 11, at his Libertyville home following a nearly three year bout with lung cancer, his wife said.

As the Lyric Opera's stage band manager, he delighted in organizing the musicians who performed on stage, rather than those who performed in the orchestra pit out of view of the audience, his wife said.

To satisfy his showman's side, Mr. Stine donned an elaborate costume and played at the Lyric Opera's annual ball, thrown to start of the opera season. Guests were greeted with majestic march music as they ascended the staircase to the ballroom.

"He loved the management part, he wasn't always playing, but there were parts where he marched across the stage," his wife said.

Mr. Stine was able to balance his Lyric Opera duties with those as a teacher at Schurz High School, where he taught in the school's celebrated music academy.

"He was very sincere in the way that he managed the orchestra at Schurz," said fellow teacher and trumpet player Billy Brewer. "He always liked promoting the idea that Schurz High School's string orchestra had the second oldest stringed orchestra in the city of Chicago, second only to the Chicago Symphony."

Brewer and Mr. Stine met as teenage trumpet players in the Catholic Youth Organization's band. They went on to become college roommates and band mates who performed across the city.

Jacobson Stine met her future husband when both were booked for a gig iin Kankakee in November 1988. Despite an age difference of nearly three decades, the pair made an immediate connection on their trip to their performance.

"We just talked all the way there, we talked after we played, and we talked all the way home," she remembered. "In a couple of weeks, I thought 'I'm gonna marry this guy.' This is my soul mate, we just hit it off from the very beginning."

Raised in the city's Austin neighborhood, Mr. Stine studied piano before becoming interested in the trumpet. He received a bachelor's degree in music from DePaul University, his master's in music from Roosevelt University.

He toured Europe with the 7th Army Symphony, for two years beginning in 1958.

Mr. Stine continued performing in his final years playing with Lyric Opera or at Wrigley Field for Chicago Cubs games.

"He kept doing it and sounding great," Jacobson Stine said.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Stine is survived by two daughters Linnea and Karen.